AI Disruption

AI Disruption

Anthropic +50% output, yet I’m coding myself obsolete

Anthropic study: AI boosts engineer output 50%, sparks fears of skill loss and job erosion as Claude takes over coding, design and even mentorship.

Meng Li's avatar
Meng Li
Dec 04, 2025
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How Is AI Really Changing the Way We Work?

AI giant Anthropic turned its research lens on itself.

In August 2025, they conducted a survey of 132 internal engineers and researchers, supplemented by 53 in-depth qualitative interviews and analysis of internal Claude Code usage data, attempting to reveal AI’s true impact within their own company.

The research findings paint a picture of profound transformation: the nature of software developers’ work is being fundamentally changed, with hope and concern coexisting side by side.

Engineers’ productivity has dramatically increased, they’ve become more “full-stack,” learning and iteration speeds have accelerated, and they’ve even begun tackling tasks previously overlooked.

But this expansion in breadth also brings trade-offs: some worry this may lead to a loss of deep technical capabilities or an inability to effectively supervise Claude’s output; others embrace the change, believing it allows them to engage in higher-level thinking.

Some have found that increased collaboration with AI means decreased collaboration with colleagues; others are beginning to wonder whether they’ll eventually be replaced by automation tools.

This research focused on a company that builds AI, whose engineers already enjoy the privilege of accessing cutting-edge tools, but Anthropic believes that the changes happening internally may foreshadow broader social transformation.

The models used in the study were Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.

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